The original Tron – annoyingly squeezed

Last week I passed along the Comic-Yawn report about footage to a sequel to Tron that I had never heard anything about. You didn’t care, but after thinking about it a little, the 5th grader inside of me got a bit excited, especially over word Jeff Bridges was in the footage.

Jim Hill Media has some additional information including the fact that the man behind the sequel is none other than Pixar’s John Lasseter. Writing the script are Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (TV’s Lost). Joseph Kosinski (Saab, Nike and X-Box commercials) will be directing.

Original director Steve Lisberger, who had spent five years developing a script for a sequel, is off the creative end of the project (he’ll still get a co-producer credit). Sucks to be him, but apparently Lasseter wasn’t a fan of the original movie’s story anyway.

Lasseter vs Lisberger…in some circles that’s a steel cage nerd death match that could make a proper geek cry. I respect and appreciate them both in their own special ways, so I’m sorry to hear the old man isn’t going to be involved.

But wait…LIGHT CYCLES! Woot for the Tron arcade game too, while I’m at it. Never could get past the third stage on the light cycles.

Well, it helped to revolutionize animation in a way, but I’m having a hard time explaining why it matters 25 years later. I’m guessing someone who has never seen it would watch it and think it wasn’t a very big deal at all, but it knocked me out when I was a kid.

I think Tron is like The Goonies: if you didn’t see it at the right age when it was new, the cult following for it may not make a lick of sense now. Explaining it won’t help.

I couldn’t possibly expect anyone to really appreciate Tron in retrospect, but if you saw what it took them to create the effects 25 years ago, you’d probably suitably amazed anyone was crazy enough to do that.

I got two words for you though, Nick: Jeff. Bridges. Reason enough to give it a shot.